This one should have been a winner. Certainly for me. A hard-boiled mystery set in the Viking Age, written by a modern Dane to illuminate King Cnut (or Canute, or Knut) the Great, conqueror of England, a remarkable man mostly forgotten by history. I really wanted to like this book.

Sadly, I was disappointed with The King’s Hounds by Martin Jensen. Not that it was awful. It just didn’t grab me much.

Our detectives in this story are Winston, an English illuminator (he paints pictures in books) and Halfdan, a half-Danish nobleman’s son, recently deprived of his family estates.

They join forces while on their way to the city of Oxford, where King Cnut has called an assembly. A noblewoman has summoned Winston to draw a portrait of the king for her. But when they get there the patroness is gone. Instead they meet the king who (for somewhat unconvincing reasons) decides Winston is just the man to investigate the recent murder of a Saxon nobleman. They have a three day deadline, or the king will Be Displeased, and probably kill them.

So they start wandering around the town and its many visitors’ camps, asking questions. Along the way Winston falls in love, Halfdan kills a couple assassins and saves a pretty girl’s life, and a bewildering number of nobles are forced to reveal their secrets.

It’s hard to say why it all bored me, but it did. The authenticity level wasn’t bad. The royal deadline on the investigation should have raised dramatic tension. But it seemed like just one repetitive scene after another. Characters blurred into one another; even Winston and Halfdan didn’t really come alive for me.

I don’t think I can blame the translator. I was impressed with the absence of the stiffness I generally note in translations from Scandinavian novels. In fact, the prose kind of reminded me of my own – except that I would never put neologisms like, “bugging me,” “debriefed,” and “gold digger” in a story set in the 11th Century.

Didn’t work for me, to my great regret. Your mileage may vary. Only mild cautions for language and mature content.

The scenario is an old standard, and still works just fine. Sam Carlisle used to be a cop in the English Midlands, but after a traumatic loss he climbed into a bottle, quit the job, and moved north. Now he’s out of money and looking for work. A local real estate big shot observes him stopping a purse snatcher and offers him a job as his driver and bodyguard. When Sam asks him why he doesn’t hire one of the established security firms, his answer is evasive.

Still, Sam needs the job and he takes it. And that’s the beginning of A New Dawn Rising by Michael Joseph. Things go all right for Sam until his employer is killed in a fire, and it looks like arson, and the police target Sam as the perpetrator.

I liked A New Dawn Rising, mostly, except for one very large plot problem. There’s supposed to be a big surprise near the end, but it’s one that’s been used a thousand times before. It was obvious even to me, and I’m pretty easy to fool. I felt badly for the author, because all in all the book was a creditable attempt, with interesting, well-drawn characters and good dialogue.

You might enjoy it too, if you’re tolerant of plot chestnuts.